Reform’s leader has won and done better in Clacton than 2024. However anyone paying close attention to the underlying numbers around Farage and his party will notice even at the peak of their polling powers, you could always find twice as many Brits who had an unfavourable opinion of him as had a favourable one.
It’s easy for me, as someone who works in a think tank and has zero desire to run for elected office, to sit at my desk and tell politicians they need to do unpopular things for the good of the country. But the simple truth is that they do. Without it, there’s no route other than continued stagnation and inevitable decline.
Arithmetic doesn’t care which party is in office. Politicians who cannot bring themselves to run the numbers forward, on prisons or anything else, will keep meeting their future as a crisis, whoever happens to be standing there when it arrives. Breaking that cycle will provide electoral advantages, but also policy ones.
Can we put at least some of our differences aside, start being civil towards one another, and focus on defeating our true opponents?
The losses simply get worse and the poor old taxpayer has to pay all the bills. For how long will they manage to preserve the jobs? Government should not overclaim for what it can achieve when there is no-one else left to blame.
Perhaps Mr Wu should have taken a dinghy towards the White Cliffs of Dover. In Vera Lynn’s time there were bluebirds over them. Today, there’ll probably be coaches waiting to escort you to a 4-star hotel in Canary Wharf.
Devolution to Scotland and Wales hasn’t exactly been a rip roaring success. That’s true, but then England isn’t Scotland or Wales — and it’s about time our constitution reflected that fact.
The only time Welsh languiage the numbers went up, in 1991 and 2001, was after Conservative governments established S4C, the Welsh language TV channel, and the Welsh Language Act, putting Welsh on an equal footing in public business and justice administration.
The NHS is not failing because hospitals are weak. It is failing because the system behind them is breaking down. Until Britain rebuilds social care, every promise to save the NHS will remain another expensive illusion.
Kemi Badenoch is right to keep those who share this warped worldview well away from the Conservative Party. Should they wish to pursue the folly of net zero, Ed Davey’s circus is always looking for new performers.
There is a wilful naivety which insists that all illegal small boat people are desperate refugees fleeing warzones. It is matched by successive British governments’ touching faith that France will help them solve the migrant problem.
Education reform alone will not reverse the surge in Neets. Government must reduce the cost of hiring young people, reform welfare and tackle the broken incentives in the labour market. “University at any cost” should be unmasked as the true villain, once and for all.
Ultimately, we should remember a simple lesson: in poker terms, we still have a one of the best hands of any nation, we just need to play it better.
If we call out narcissism in pantomime “strongmen” villains, we must recognise the same in “empathetic” leaders. Both mould the office to their own personalities. The leader becomes the arbiter of truth. Lee’s “iron” provides the obstinacy that separates the two.